Saturday, 26 July 2014

That was a day. It started at
8.30am, picked up in Ballyhea by Rob and Fiona Fitzpatrick; it ended when we got
back to Charleville more than 12 hours later and Rob, Fiona, Siobhan (my wife) and myself sat down to discuss the day. Siobhan asked the question - what was the low point, what was the high
point (only two had been allowed into the meeting, Fiona and myself)?

We headed for Dublin via Cork
(short diversion to have a few staples removed from my shoulder, result of a
recent shoulder operation), final destination the Central Bank on Dame Street
and a meeting with the Governor himself, Patrick Honahan.

THERE ARE MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

We had prepared for Mr Honahan a
list of questions (see below) relating to the Promissory Note sovereign bonds
he now holds in his vault, bonds of over €28,000,000,000 in value (the
insertion of all the zeroes is deliberate - that's what €28billion looks like).

The two big questions: 1) what
happens to the billions raised from the sale of the Promissory Note bonds? 2)
As a sitting member, Ireland's representative, would Mr Honahan use his
influence to set up a meeting for us with the Governing Council of the ECB?

It would be our second meeting
with Mr Honahan (the first took place last year) but this one was different.
Accompanying us would be MEPs Luke Ming Flanagan and Nessa Childers from the
European Parliament, along with TDs Stephen Donnelly and Peter Mathews from our
national parliament, Stephen there representing the Technical Group.

Yet another MEP, Marian Harkin,
wished to join us but was unable to do so.

Most of the groundwork for the
meeting had been laid by Fiona and she had also organised a pre-Central Bank
meeting with Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan, who reiterated her party's support for
what we in the Ballyhea/Charleville campaign group are doing, along with those
in the various other centres around the country (Ratoath and Dublin getting
very honourable mention here for their relentlessness).

THE MEETING

Having been signed in, we were
escorted to a boardroom in the upper floors of the Central Bank (fantastic view
over the south city) where we were immediately joined by Patrick Honahan and
another Central Bank official, David Cronin.

The meeting lasted for over an
hour, got hot and heavy on more than a few occasions, everyone having their say
bar Mr Cronin. Consequently there was too much in it to offer a blow-by-blow
account so herewith, a summary (quotes from own shorthand record of the
meeting).

Peter Mathews
From the perspective of all those
of us in our group, as a Chartered Accountant and former banker himself no-one
understands the whole Promissory Note debacle more than Peter Mathews and the
pain he feels at what is happening in the name of his former profession is
palpable. He sympathised with the position Mr Honahan found himself in on his
appointment as Governor in 2010, likening him to the fabled little boy in
Holland with his finger in the dyke, doing his best to stop the floodwaters
from breeching.

There, however, his sympathy
ended, and Peter made very clear his anger with how bank-debt of nearly €70bn
has been forced on the Irish people. "The details of the Promissory Notes
have never been properly understood by the commentators at home," he
fumed, "So the true story of what has happened has never been told in
Europe. It's a story of bank-debt losses. The Promissory Notes have been
replaced by Promissory Note bonds and we're told that because we're now in
better shape, we can pay these bonds." Peter's final question was telling - "Are we a society or are we an economy?"

Stephen Donnelly
His fellow TD, Wicklow's Stephen
Donnelly, with the kind of straight-talking straight-to-the-point attitude to
which we've become accustomed in his Dáil performances, had a number of
questions for Mr Honahan. "Is it possible for the ECB to destroy these
bonds and if not, who do we go to next?"

Well, we established that even if
they don't have the ultimate decision the ECB does indeed have a major say in
what happens to the bonds, in which case Stephen had a very practical
suggestion - "Rather than sell them, can we not just hold the Promissory
Note bonds until such time as they all mature, thus costing only the minimal
interest rate we're paying on the loan at the moment, around €45m/annum?"

Luke Ming Flanagan

For Luke Ming, a face-to-face
meeting with the ECB is an imperative. "I hope to meet the ECB and ask
them to do what is morally right. We're being forced into a marriage with these
people but it's like Ireland of the 70s, no divorce option. I'm not sure what
kind of people we're being tied to; I want to meet them and know, are they
worth dealing with? Their answers will define that. We need a meeting, we need
assurances, we need to see if they understand that Ireland took this Promissory
Note debt on board to save the European banking system. The ECB cheered us on
and why wouldn't they, but the people made no profit from any of those banks – well,
the debt isn't going to come our way either. I need to meet those people, I
need to be able to go back to the 124,000 who voted for me and let them know what
the ECB is like."

Nessa Childers

Nessa Childers outlined her fear
not just for Ireland, on how the Promissory Note deal has been handled, but for
Europe itself. "The European Parliament has no power over the ECB but we
do meet them. I remember at our last meeting with Jean-Claude Trichet (former
President of the ECB), when asked about progress he made a fingers-crossed
gesture. The decision taken by Mario Draghi (current ECB President) to provide
a backstop to the euro, when he said he would do whatever had to be done, has
led us all into a fools' paradise. We've been pushing the debt out but are we
now close to the limit?"

THIS PARROT IS NOT DEAD, IT IS SLEEPING

When Mr Honahan got to respond
(the meeting was chaired and controlled by Fiona), what we heard was not in the
least encouraging. He did confirm what was happening to the billions being
raised through the Promissory Note bonds, what has already in fact happened to
the full €3.06bn from the 2011 bond, plus to all the €350m raised from the
partial sale of the 2012 bond - it has been destroyed, or to use Mr Honahan's
own quaint description, it has been 'extinguished'.

BURNING THE BONDS, NOT THE BILLIONS

On the question of the possible
destruction of the remaining bonds as opposed to the 'extinguishing' of the
billions associated with them and the subsequent burdening of the next several
generations of Irish people with that debt, not an inch from the Central Bank
Governor.

"Everything I'm doing has
been about protecting the Irish taxpayer from the consequences of the blanket
bank guarantee," he said; "The Promissory Notes came from that. The
Central Bank is bound by strict laws; within those laws I'm doing everything I
can to protect the Irish taxpayer."

On Stephen Donnelly's suggestion
that if he won't destroy the bonds, he could at least just hold them, let them
die a natural death rather than sell them and then destroy the money, burden
future generations with the subsequent debt - no dice. "I know this line
will fail; already we're right up against the line of what is legal, the ECB
speaking of monetary financing."

THE FALLOUT

None of this came as any great
shock to any of us on our side of the table. Along with Finance Minister
Michael Noonan, Patrick Honahan was one of the main architects of the
Promissory Note 'deal'. I'm not going to use this forum to castigate the man –
in the first instance, he can’t defend himself. Suffice to say, Patrick believes
he’s doing a great job; I don’t.

For Patrick, there appears to be
no objection to the idea of a nation – even his own nation – being forced to
shoulder a debt incurred to save not the two Irish banks involved but their
creditors across the globe, to save the European banking system, perhaps even
to save the euro itself (suggestions which he appeared to accept). Whether or
not it's right? Not relevant.

MEETING THE ECB

We moved on to the major reason
we were there, to ask Mr Honahan if he'd use his influence to set up a meeting
between this representative group and the ECB Governing Council.

Again, no. "I'm not inclined
to do that" he said, point blank; "I feel I can achieve more for
Ireland by not arranging that meeting, but I won't stand in your way."

Fiona was having none of it.
"I don't believe in not asking the question and that's why we want to meet
the ECB, to do just that. Look at the people in this room, the mandate they
have; look at those who are not here but who are backing what we're doing; look
at the result of the recent elections; it is now the will of the people of
Ireland that the ECB must be challenged on these Promissory Note bonds. I'm
asking if you'll do the will of the people and facilitate that meeting. You
said you were Ireland's representative on that ECB board so I'm asking again,
will you facilitate that meeting?"

Again, Patrick wasn't for moving.
"I'm not sure I want to push for a set of meetings that won't go anywhere,
I don’t want to use up whatever remaining credit I have on that. I think I've
achieved quite a lot and I can achieve more. I don't want to (set up that
meeting)."

Many times already the meeting
had become heated – this was another flashpoint. Peter Mathews had a bit of
advice for Patrick, along the lines suggested earlier by Stephen Donnelly.
"If you really want to concentrate their minds, tell them you're not going
to sell the bonds, that you're thinking of controlling these bonds yourself.
This is like being asked to pay 'protection money'."

Luke Ming was incensed. "Do
you take any notice of election results, of the will of the people? We're not
getting any benefit from this capital, from those bonds – I don't care how
little interest we're asked to pay, or what terms we're being offered. If you
can arrange this meeting, surely this can only help your cause? Prior to the
last election it could be argued there was no objection in Ireland to what was
being done – after the results of those elections that is obviously no longer
the case. In my constituency there are two independents (himself and Marian
Harkin), in Dublin there is Nessa, in Ireland South now there's Brian Crowley,
while Sinn Fein have an MEP in every constituency, all against the Promissory
Note debt. That election was the most recent taking of the temperature of the
Irish electorate; it should tell Europe, we're about to pop. Play your card –
us!"

Eventually, reluctantly,
definitely against his own better judgement, Mr Honahan agreed, but it was a
grudging agreement. "They're (Europe) sick and tired of the Irish
bank-debt story," he claimed, "I'm happy to write a letter to the ECB
board but won't be pushing for the meeting."

THE HIGHS AND LOWS

So, getting back to the opening
paragraph, the low point, the high point.

That the money raised from the
bonds was being destroyed I already knew, so that came as no surprise; that Mr
Honahan would also not be keen to have our new group – no matter how many
people were now represented – meet the ECB, again, no surprise. For me though,
the low point was the confirmation by Mr Honahan that in all of what has been
done to the Irish people in this entire bank-debt imposition, the fundamental
human law of right over wrong simply doesn't apply.

The high point? After the
meeting, during interviews in front of the Central Bank we met Conor McGregor,
the soon-to-be world champion in the fast-growing sport of mixed martial arts
cage-fighting and a true son of Dublin.

Conor's motto, adopted on behalf
of several other up-and-coming Irish fighters, is 'We're not here to take part,
we're here to take over!'

Would that the man with whom we'd
been talking for the previous hour-plus had even a scintilla of that attitude.
I trust though that he is a man of his word and will put through that request.
Along with this new alliance, I really want to sit in front of that ECB board
and ask them to justify what they're doing to Ireland.

Those bonds must NOT be sold,
those billions must NOT be 'extinguished', that debt-burden must NOT be imposed
on successive Irish generations, debt-slaves to Europe for the next 40 years
and beyond.

NB: The above is my own opinion,
neither formed nor endorsed by anyone else who attended the meeting.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Going to be out of action for a few weeks (date with a knife
tomorrow, July 17th, old war-wounds that couldn't be ignored any longer!) so a
quick update on the Ballyhea campaign.

EUROPEAN
ELECTIONS

The recent European elections threw up a very positive
result for us, the election of three independents (Luke Ming Flanagan, Nessa
Childers and Marian Harkin), now joined by Brian Crowley, all of whom have
stated unequivocally that they will be working towards the alleviation of the
bank-debt burden on Ireland. Already, since the election, we've been in touch
with all those MEPs, have met with a few, and in the coming months we will be
working with them on the bank-debt campaign.

Sinn Féin also had a very successful European campaign,
returned four MEPs (Liadh Ní Riada, Matt Carthy, Lynn Boylan, Martina
Anderson), and Sinn Féin too have indicated that bank-debt writedown for
Ireland will be a priority. That's eight Irish MEPs now actively campaigning
with and for us (the people, not just this campaign group), a quantum
improvement on the previous Parliament.

PLANNED
MEETINGS

On Friday week (July 25th), Central Bank governor Patrick
Honahan has agreed to meet a delegation which, along with ourselves, will
include representatives from those MEPs, plus representatives of the Technical
Group in the Dáil.

At the moment we are also pursuing meetings with a) the ECB
(accompanied again by elected representatives from both the national the
European Parliaments), b) the new chair of ECON and c), representatives from
all the major groupings in the new Parliament.

IT’S
NOT TOO LATE – IN FACT NEVER MORE TIMELY OR URGENT

For those who believe that it's too late to address the
bank-debt, that everything is done and dusted, I can't stress enough - nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact it was never more immediate, never
more stark, than it is now. Why? The dreaded Promissory Notes, or more
accurately, the Promissory Note bonds, the instruments used by Finance Minister
Michael Noonan to transfer responsibility for payment of those Promissory Note
billions from this generation to the next, and to the generation after.

PROMISSORY
NOTES IN A NUTSHELL

In a nutshell the situation is this: in 2010 two Irish banks
- Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide - had entered zombie stage, had €31bn in
liabilities between them and only junk assets to cover those liabilities. If
they went under, however, the fear was that this would start a
domino effect across a number of other deeply troubled banks and would bring
down not just the major banks in the so-called core European countries (Germany
and France especially), but would bring down even the euro currency itself.

To avoid this very real possibility the ECB accepted from
the Irish government as collateral for the €31bn issued to those two bust banks the now infamous Promissory
Notes; theirs was the final say in this and in doing so, they bent (and possibly
broke) their own rules.

Critical to note here, this money did NOT go to the Irish people,
it went to bail out those two banks and by extension, to bail out their
creditors. Now, however, the ECB wants its pound of flesh. 'The Central Bank of Ireland printed that extra €31bn,' goes their logic; 'The Irish government acted as guarantor; now we want that €31bn taken
back out of circulation.'

No mention of their own role in accepting the Promissory Notes; no mention of the fact this possibly saved the European banking system, if not the euro itself; no mention of the fact that all those billions went to banks, not to the people. Just this insistence that the entire burden must be borne by us, the Irish
people.

Of course we don't have that €31bn (we're broke like - in
fact we're over €200bn in debt already!) so, we're forced to borrow it.

THE
PROMISSORY NOTE BONDS

We're doing this in the form of sovereign bonds and we're
doing it in stages. This year the Central Bank will sell a bond for
€500,000,000. That's almost exactly what the government expects to raise from
water charges for the year; it is also the projected shortfall in the HSE
budget for 2014, a shortfall that will necessitate further cuts in an already
critically-stretched health service.

What will the Central Bank do with this €500,000,000 -
invest in our water services, in our health service? Neither. It will destroy
it, every last cent, the ECB insisting on its pound of flesh.

WORSE
TO COME

As noted above however, that is merely the first step. Next
year, another €500,000,000 raised by the Central Bank, another €500,000,000
destroyed, then likewise for another three years. And it gets worse.

For each of the five years after 2018, €1,000,000,000 raised
by the Central Bank, then destroyed; for each of eight years after 2023, the
figure increases to €2,000,000,000, raised and destroyed; finally, in 2032,
€1,500,000,000, making a total of €25,000,000,000.

These are telephone numbers, I know - even beyond telephone
numbers. On their own they're difficult for people to take in but even more
difficult for people to absorb, the fact that all this money, all those
badly-needed billions, will be destroyed.

The story doesn't even end there: As each of the bonds are
sold, we start paying the interest to the new bondholder, and we pay it
annually for the lifetime of that bond. Then, when the bond 'matures' (and the
first chicken comes home to roost in 2038), we have to pay the principal, the
full original sum of each individual bond, again a total of €25,000,000,000 - again
a figure and a concept almost impossible for people to grasp.

CRISIS
POINT – A CALL TO ARMS

But that is the plan, that is the vaunted Noonan Promissory
Note 'deal', that's how 'gone' those Notes are. The debt remained, in its
entirety; the billions are still destroyed, in their entirety; all he has done
is this – rather than challenge the ECB on the legitimacy or even the morality
of the debt itself, he shifted the payment burden from this generation to the
next, and the generation after. Would you, as an individual, do that to your kids,
and to their kids?

It can be stopped. It can be stopped now. It can be stopped
without cost. It can be stopped without consequence (that money is already in
circulation; taking it out of circulation now will have no effect in Europe, it
WILL have an effect here).

That's why this campaign is now so critical, that's why
there has never been such urgency. The sale of those bonds must be stopped and
for this, we need a coming together – of the media, of our politicians local,
national and European, of our stars of stage, screen, music and sport, of our
people in every organisation at home and abroad. Because this affects us all.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

The
following is the transcript of a few minutes from an interview conducted by Pat
Kenny with Finance Minister Michael Noonan on RTE radio on February 8th
2013, a couple of days after Minister Noonan’s lauded Promissory Notes ‘deal’.

Pat
Kenny: What changed, why did the ECB then change its mind about the whole
principle of this which I think was described – Phillip Boucher Hayes reported from Frankfurt
or he was talking to people from Frankfurt, they described it as 'barely
legal'.

Michael
Noonan: Well I don't think that's right, you see the legal people would say
that the existing Promissory Note arrangement was totally contrary to, ah...

PK:
Was illegal?

MN:
Totally, you know, so any – I mean my
argument all the time was...

PK:
So it's an improvement in its legality?

MN:
Yeah, I mean some of the bank people were saying to me 'Look, what you're
saying is illegal'; I used to say to them 'It's an awful lot more legal than
what you agreed three years ago!'

At this point they both had a little laugh,
the Minister and his Minstrel Boy; that laugh was at our expense.

A question that simply screams out from the
above exchange:

When
Michael Noonan admitted the original Promissory Notes arrangement was totally
illegal, why didn’t Pat Kenny – the highest-paid broadcaster on RTE – not ask
Minister Noonan why he hadn’t challenged that legality in court before
transforming those Notes into sovereign bonds, effectively condemning
generations of Irish people to 40 years of debt slavery? Hell, why didn’t Michael Noonan challenge the ECB, why didn’t he even ask
the ECB for debt writeoff?

When
the narrative of this entire sorry period in our history finally comes to be
written, that little exchange above will loom large. To ease the budgetary
pressure on his own government for the remainder of its tenure, Michael Noonan took
a debt he believed totally illegal and rather than face down the ECB, shifted
the entire debt burden, plus interest, to the shoulders of his own nation’s
children and their children. And was lauded and applauded for it by those such
as Pat Kenny above.

In
Ballyhea and in Charleville, in Ratoath and a few other places around the
country, we continue to protest, we continue to campaign, Sunday after Sunday. We
can still reverse this. Join us, write your own piece of history.